Lupus has really slowed down the speed at which I work, when I’m suffering a flare. Additionally, the inflammation in my wrists affects my fine motor skills. I find detail work far more challenging, and fatigue from it far earlier. As an artist with lupus, and knowing that every persons manifestation of lupus is as individual as a snowflake, I’ve started to experiment a bit with my treatment.

I find that the corticosteroid cream for the skin inflammation can be applied around the wrists for some temporary relief. I have also been using an herbal combination of Curcumin and Licorice Root to help bring down inflammation too. I find them to work more effectively together than taken apart. They have helped get rid of the morning stiffness I was experiencing by taking them before bed.

The hardest part of making lifestyle changes is that I have an intense love of nature and the outdoors and now have to be very careful when and how I’m exposed to sunlight. Now hiking and snapping photos of wildlife for painting has limitations, as does my gardening. It’s all about adapting.

Being that it is Lupus awareness month I will share the following- Lupus should be considered a women’s health issue. Of the 1.5+ million people with Lupus, over 90% are women. These women receive their diagnosis usually during child bearing years and experience a worsening of symptoms often while ovulating. There will be several Lupus walks throughout the country this summer. I will be attending mine in June. On May 18th wear purple and find a way to make more people aware of this disease that affects more people than MS or Leukemia!

I stumbled upon Windsor & Newton’s Ink Competition through their FB Page. They created a FB App for promoting and for the application process, which was amazingly successful when you look at the number and diversity of entries. Mostly I wanted to interact and connect with other artists through the competition, as I do through social media in general.  Competitions, group/themed exhibits, and all aspects of the internet help pull us seclusive creatures out of the woodwork.

Working in pen and ink can be intimidating when you choose to stick to just black and white. Somehow Stippling frees the constraints of that for me. It is very time consuming but easy to do while watching tv. I didn’t have time to create something fresh and new, so I submitted my Zebra Colt stippling from my Illustration I class from my second year at Kendall College of Art and Design.

 
Getting feedback from other artists is also deeply gratifying for me. I get to know what I’m communicating and how people feel when they see my work. What I like best is seeing people connect with my subject, all art aside.

While the zebra stippling was not selected for the ink competition, it was one of the most popular images. I was very humbled by all the wonderful comments I received. I have one more use in mind for the digital image of the zebra, aside from the painting the actual physical piece “African Sunrise”. I encourage you to take a peek at the winning images, they are fun and very diverse! My favorite is the colorful “Inky Octopus” by Hayley Chan!

The whole concept of Pinterest is something I’d been craving to use for a while. I’ve felt nervous, for some time now, about sharing my work online while trying to build up my portfolio for Art Licensing. Luckily I have my “Masters List” of other professionals to study and model from and under. I watched how they used Pinterest for a couple weeks. I was able to see how I would use it with my own style for building community and cross-marketing before starting. They, inadvertently, showed me how to use it safely with respects to my larger goals in a world of copyright piracy.

I have only dipped my feet in the Pinterest world and am enjoying it. Time to amp things up and get busy along with all the energy that is blossoming back into me! The two most shared items in my boards are from my Inspiration board and a “My Art”  board.

Finally, came home and coded in the button on my site, instead of cracking into my new brushes right away. Forgot  I’d reduced the size- oops! Well I will fix it after dinner.  I’m contemplating making the buttons light up slightly with a rollover as I have with other buttons- we shall see. For now getting it up will suffice, the rest can wait!I also took a run downtown today to support a local arts business being promoted by the Ca$h Mob initiative of the Toledo Choose Local organization. Perfect little artist date for myself as it was to the  Art Supply Depō . I took advantage of a 40% off sale they were having on my favorite new designer brushes to paint with! Enjoyed the beautiful sunshine, a short chat with the lovely people who own the store, and ended it all with  a little stop in a cafe nearby.

Even with all the chatter about the rising Creative Class in the research by Richard Florida, and cities being rated by their creativity, I  still run into cynicism. The irony to me is that the world of visual arts is constantly being amped up, both in the multitude of places it is being streamed and in the steady hunger for innovations and fresh styles. Pinnterest is a great example of the hunger and personal attachment people have to images in conjunction with ideas.

Currently the US department of Labor Statistics shows the following samples of how visual art is trending upward:

More Info: BLS.GOV

When I was junior I was told point-blank by a very misogynist and discriminating counselor that I would never be able to go to college. Coming on the heels of having just legally emancipated myself, to begin to reconstruct the damage of having an alcoholic parent, this might have been enough to defeat me. Having won Congressional Art  and PTA awards that year in painting, having the support of a great teacher, and having had a long stream of straight A’s in a gifted (GATE) program, I held my chin up and decided I would do it without his help.

Just for the record , I was accepted at every school I applied to based on my SAT and ACT scores; they all took my emancipation in stride. I was even offered a scholarship to study botany based on those scores; but I loved ART!  My portfolio got me accepted by Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, MI. It was a hard-earned experience, but learning to live by my own bootstrap- efforts and my own life goals was deeply gratifying.

I can’t even begin to imagine what opportunities I would have seen younger and earlier if I had had some of the knowledge I have now. I was thrilled to pass along information and a lot of  ”invent the rules”, “go get ‘em”, “make a trail” type of encouragement. Ultimately, I encouraged them to find ways to lead, because it forces a lot of learning and out of the box thinking.

Many of them have likely had stories of discouragement similar to my own. So I tried to give them a shot of defiance by sharing the story of Drew Brophy and how he rose above and innovated in an industry. His is another great story of success and living on your own terms that I came across through the artist Tara Reed’s “Ask Calls”.

So I retire from the day feeling happy to see so many young faces coming forward to add their voice and talents to the world! Cheers to the Creative Class!

I saw a really fun thing on another blog several weeks ago. There  were alternating images loaded below each comment left by the readers. It looked fabulously fun! I have been thinking for a while about how I would like to restyle my comments in a way that is interesting, fun, and sticks with the old-world style of my blog.

I spent a week working out some new knotwork creatures and knotwork patterns to use. A few I scrapped, because while they were very handsome patterns, they wouldn’t work with the blog’s style too well.

In addition to the alternating comments, I also noticed author specific styling on a different blog. This idea is something I chose to use as well. Naturally I worked up a raven knotwork for my own reply comments. Additionally, I chose to choose switch the direction of this one to balance out the page composition.

Now that I have the design and painting done, I can prep them to work on my blogs background and the web. The next step is rewriting the code, but that wont take too long. One thing I noticed, once finished, was that all knotwork animals I chose are animal forms of the celtic goddess Morrigan.

I want to do a couple more simple, non-animal patterns but that can wait a little longer. I still plan to customize the bottom page navigation which I left half worked on, and then setup Pinterest etc.

Hope you are all having a little creative fun this week!

Another character/creature completed. Pretty happy with the results and I think it will be a lot more fun in color. It will be a long while before I paint them. Originally the intent was for just the one, but things develop an identity separate from vision once the lines start forming.

In the mean time, I’m designing the intricate triskellion disk that the Satyr and this Feline Fae are sitting upon. I’ve been doing a lot of celtic knotwork lately and will share more soon!

I‘m ramping things up to finish my mini art book, for the 2012 Sketchbook Project. I was all ready to lay out the map insert when I realized that I over measured by an inch on the main page. Given the cats had slept on the template a few nights already and left a love crease in it, I was already prepared to lay it out again. Can’t wait to share that soon!

Today, however, I am developing one of the two characters for a different feature section of the book that are guarding the spheres. One is depicted atlas style, under the weight of the sphere, the second will be perched above a globe on the adjacent page.

I chose a satyr like female creature. The horns are styled after Welsh black ram horns, but inverted. Hopefully I will have time to go back and tweak the contraposta some more. Combining skeletal structures in mythical creatures is challenging in and of itself. Somehow, I always seem to do it with contorted positions that require subtle foreshortening. A little tension in the pose creates interest and suggests a larger story in motion, so I hope.

Sketches:

Naturally  all these things were apparent in the package she sent. I loved her garden and handmade treats, artwork, and the delicious chocolates. The Lavendar Bath Soother  was used while I was recovering from an icky flu, which made it even more of a treat!

This package was from the “Pay It Forward” offering she had shared on her own blog Silver Apples of the Moon.  So in staying true to the spirit of things I decided to do a similar offering the following winter.

The snow is here, the downtown is twinkling with festive lights, and my children have a running lists of holiday treats to bake. It’s officially winter. Winter is cold, can be gloomy and dark, and just begs for sweet surprises.

What I love most about the Pay It Forward concept is that it spreads a little more joy and light into the world. There simply is no better time of year to celebrate the power of kindness and hope. All the various religions out there are celebrating light which perfectly embodies these.

I am sending out to the first person who responds in the comments section an original 5″x5″ Holiday themed painting and some additional handmade goodness, and then to the next two people some prints and handmade goodness as well.

The Paying It Forward rules:

• The first three people who leave a comment on this post shall join this PIF exchange.
• The only thing you have to do in return is to pay it forward on your own website or blog.
• Handmade isn’t always instant gratification; so kindly give up to a year for completion. ( Luckily I already know what I am     going to send so it won’t take me the whole year!)

In addition to Tara L. Chang’s blog you can see more of her wonderful work on her website TLC Illustration.- THANKS AGAIN TARA!

What is most interesting about some of these booths is that they weren’t simply decorated with swags of complimenting fabric and nicely printed banners. Far more interestingly, they were set up with architectural elements lending a full atmosphere to the art and the style of the artist. What this does for the patron of a festival is give them a very thorough visual experience.

I was wondering if this was an up and coming trend for festivals and how it might show in the booths of the artists of the Black Swamp Arts Festival this year. One newcomer artist did very well taking advantage of his space. In this photo, Andrew Van Shyndle, poses briefly with representatives from  Montessori School of Bowling Green. Just to the left side you can see the edge of his booth.

Andrew received one of the two highest awards in the festival,

Dennis Wojtkiewicz said it was reminiscent of the animated film work of Tim Burton. And Van Schyndle’s booth with a towering superstructure made of wood, only enhanced the effect.
“You enter into this world,” Wojtkiewicz said. “The booth supports the work and vice versa… The complete package is an important part of how you respond.”

-from Sentinel-Tribune “Repeat winner, newcomer get top art show prizes” by David Dupont

For artists who make a solid portion of their income from doing art shows and festivals this is an opportunity to not only bring in more sales and be more memorable to the patrons, but also get into more festivals. Part of submitting an application into a festival or art show is your booth image, and that is nothing to take lightly.

My experience, as chair of the Visual Arts Committee for the Black Swamp Arts Festival and president of Bowling Green Arts Council, has given me inside exposure to other sides of the art world. Much of what I have learned over the last few years echoes some points artist Paul Brent covers in the “Brand Yourself for Success”  teleseminar* he did with Art Licensing Guru Tara Reed.

From highly qualified jurors and seasoned, successful festival artists, here are some of the inside tips I have gleaned.

• Be memorable! The appearance of the booth and your personality can have a huge impact on sales.
• Your booth is your portable gallery; it should be clean, accesible, and visually inviting.
• Don’t display your work in a dressed-up garage sale style, if you want top dollar. Top dollar comes from showcasing the artwork as a fine pieces of art.
• Booth images: should be non-seasonal, unless you are applying for a seasonal themed show; should never be digitally rendered; should show your current work and style; and should be well lit to show details of all the work inside it.
• Avoid expanding out of your booth space into fire lanes,  neighboring artists’ space, foot traffic space, or outside the guidelines presented by the festival or show.
• Be ready for all weather–especially high winds. The best tip I received for high winds was from Debra Purdy, who showed off her  tractor weights* and how much less space they took up in her booth.

All links provided as a courtesy reference. The * indicates the link to the product or service is an affiliate link. For more info see FTC Disclosure